The year is 1280, and House Speaker Paul Ryan is not going to let Mel Gibson get hanged, drawn and quartered!
In an email blast sent out on Friday building on a speech he gave earlier this month, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office sent out an email calling for conservatives to unite over a “bold” new agenda (the number one priority of which is “national security,” which roughly translates to “keeping those gross traumatized Syrian orphans the heck outta here!”)
“We have to ‘unite the clans’,” the email reads, above a gif from Braveheart involving two dirt-streaked men clasping hands in a masculine way.
Building a movement—particularly one based on such an inclusive approach—takes time, but as Braveheart reminds us, it’s all worth it in the fight for “freeeeedooooooooom.”
I am not sure that Paul Ryan saw the end of that movie, but okay!
Congressional Republicans have had a collective hard-on for Braveheart for a while now; a 2011 Washington Post op-ed recalled House GOP-ers huddling in a conference room for “more than two hours” prior to an important tax vote to gab about their favorite scenes:
One member spoke about the apocryphal scene in which the 13th-century Scottish rebel William Wallace ordered his troops to moon the English. Another member recounted the scene in which Wallace commanded the rebels to hold their positions before raising their spears against the charging English cavalry.
This inspired the assembled lawmakers to chant: “Hold! Hold! Hold! Hold!”
While at first it might strain the brain to understand how Paul Ryan could possibly liken himself to the executed leader of a doomed peasant uprising, it’s really not hard to get why Republicans love Braveheart—it is one of the most historically inaccurate movies of all time, it came out in 1995, and it stars a handsome Christian who has a long, consistent record of standing strong against PC culture.
Also, the love scenes are great!
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Image via USA/Braveheart, Photoshop by Bobby Finger; gif via Giphy.
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